Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak today on Bill C-5, an act to establish the Canadian tourism commission.
I and my Canadian Alliance colleagues are opposed to the bill because it would establish one more unneeded and unnecessary crown corporation. In fact, we want to see the vast majority of the crown corporations that currently exist privatized and out of government hands. I therefore disagree with the parliamentary secretary when he says that people in the House will be pleased. We are not pleased with it and we do not want to see it turned into a crown corporation.
The Canadian Alliance has deep philosophical issues with crown corporations. We believe that most of the functions performed by our current crop of crown corporations are unnecessary and should be carried out by those who can best perform the task most cost efficiently, with the greatest accountability to the owners and with the least likelihood of incurring public debt.
That simply does not match up with what the government is proposing in terms of establishing another crown corporation, this one the Canadian Tourism Association. From this viewpoint, there are very few good reasons to create and maintain another crown corporation. In fact there is overwhelming evidence that in the vast majority of cases, private sector ownership and control is better than government dabbling in business.
EDC is another one of those. We have looked at EDC a number of times and have seen a lot of shortcomings with it. I will be using that example in many parts of my speech today.
The Canadian Alliance believes that crown corporations should be converted to the public sector institutions, left as a division within a government department, or discontinued altogether. This time we are told it is the Canadian Tourism Commission that requires crown corporation status to better serve the Canadian tourism industry and thus the Canadian economy.
We have been studying this issue at the industry committee for some time. We have heard from a lot of witnesses, but I have not been convinced and I do not think that even the parliamentary secretary was convinced of the overwhelming need to turn this tourism association into a crown corporation.
I do not think that case has been made. In fact most of the arguments from the witnesses that I heard at committee seemed to support the privatization of the Canadian Tourism Commission if anything. They told us that it needs to be taken out from under the arm of the Department of Industry because it needs flexibility, regulation and speed in decision making.
I suggest we cannot have it both ways. It cannot be both a government department and have the flexibility of a private business. If it wants to be under government and have government rules, it should stay just as it is now without converting to a crown corporation.
The advocates of the transformation claim that the new crown corporation will be able to advance the cause of tourism more efficiently and effectively, more rapidly than is the case with the Canadian Tourism Commission as it currently operates. Of course, as a division of Industry Canada, CTC is directly accountable to the Minister of Industry. The minister therefore is accountable to parliament. That may gum up the system a little, but that is the way it should remain until the commission is privatized. Either it stays as an arm of industry or it should be privatized. That is our view.
The CTC, the Canadian Tourism Commission, is a relatively young, special agency created during the economic downturn in 1995. Only five years ago the government told us that this was the be all and end all. The Canadian Tourism Commission should be just that, an association between the private sector and the Government of Canada. Now it is telling us that did not work and what is needed is a crown corporation.
The commission was set up with a mandate to promote Canadian tourism both domestically and abroad. The Canadian Tourism Commission receives about $65 million of taxpayers' money every year. Approximately one-fifth of that goes to salaries and operating expenses; the rest goes to the promotion of marketing activities.
We were told in committee that in 1995 when the commission was first established, government revenues were about 70% of the total and 30% was from the private sector. But we know the economy has turned around and that the tourism industry has turned around. We were told in committee that that formula is exactly reversed and 70% of the revenues now come from the private sector and only 30% from government. I welcome the day that the Canadian Tourism Commission can be privatized and just be an agent of the private sector.
By the way, Canadian Pacific hotels is one of the major shareholders in the organization. One would wonder why it cannot do its own tourism promotion and why government is needed in it at all.
The Canadian Tourism Commission has a 26 member board of directors, 16 of whom are directly appointed by the Government of Canada. This is hardly an arm's length relationship. There are representation requirements for the various parts of Canada, the provinces and regions. The way the distribution takes places as to which parts of the tourism industry ought to be represented is spelled out under the current arrangement. Bill C-5 which would turn the commission over to a crown corporation will not change any of that.
Now the Canadian Tourism Commission wants to enter into business arrangements to sell its logo and other revenue generating schemes. It wants to have the authority to open bank accounts. It no longer wants to go through the complicated bookkeeping style or tendering process required by treasury board. Finally, it wants to hire and fire according to the Canada Labour Code and not the federal public service employment act. It seems to me it cannot have it both ways. Either it has to have the disciplines of government that are currently in place or else it should be a private institution and have the kind of flexibility it wants.
If government rules are too slow and inhibiting, which is probably true, why not go the whole way and let it operate on its own as a private commission? It seems to me that empire building with the help of the taxpayers' money is what this is really about. What is really behind this push to a crown corporation at the Canadian Tourism Commission is empire building and the Liberal propensity for state ownership.
As I did during the second reading debate on the bill, I refer the House to an Industry Canada paper entitled “Canada in the 21st Century-Institutions and Growth-Framework Policy as a Tool of Competitive Advantage for Canada” to show the different points of view. The Industry Canada report argues for the rapid divestiture of crown assets and seems to directly contradict the arguments behind the creation of a crown corporation under Bill C-5.
Why would it hire people to do a very long study entitled “Canada in the 21st Century” which tells the government to get out of many areas in the economy and get out of crown corporations but on the other hand it is now trying to go to one in the Canadian Tourism Commission in Bill C-5? It does not seem to make any sense. Maybe they are a little dyslexic in Industry Canada.
We cannot say that there is no role for the federal government in tourism promotion; there probably is. Tourism is Canada's 12th largest revenue generating industry. It directly and indirectly employs hundreds of thousands of Canadians, but I and my Canadian Alliance colleagues are firm, not in the form of a crown corporation. Why would I say that? Our experience is that there are still a number of crown corporations, although the Conservative government under Brian Mulroney asked that a number of those be turned over to private institutions and that happened.
There are still two crown corporations which I am familiar with that have given me a very bad experience. They are the Export Development Corporation and the former Canadian Wheat Board, which is now a mixed corporation and is still a bit of an oddball. It was a crown corporation of government. As a farmer in Alberta, I had lots of experience with the Canadian Wheat Board. There was absolutely no transparency. It was a system where we had to sell our product to the Canadian Wheat Board even though many people did not want to do that. It was kind of a state run agency like we saw in the Soviet Union. Many farmers in western Canada want to get out from under that.
Members might ask why government would want to continue. It is a very good question. I suggest that the lack of transparency is one way the government can look after quite a few friends in this process.
We have asked a number of questions in the House about the Export Development Corporation. The government keeps telling us that it cannot disclose that and that there is a confidentiality issue for the countries it lends money to.
We understand that it has a $2.6 billion contingency reserve for bad loans. Why would it do that? We understand that through the Paris club Canada has written off a number of loans. It has a very strange arrangement through the Canada account which Export Development Corporation administers for the Government of Canada. Export Development Corporation gets credited with the forgone interest even though it did not make that loan.
I suggest that of the $800 million in revenues it has had in the last 10 years, most of that has come from another pocket in the Government of Canada. Treasury board and finance are rebating the Export Development Corporation. In fact, it is not making any money at all but we cannot tell for sure because it will not disclose that to parliamentarians.
When I ask the Export Development Corporation and the Canadian Wheat Board for information, they say they cannot tell me that even though I am a member of parliament. They say they report to the minister. In the case of the Canadian Wheat Board, it was the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food. In the case of the Export Development Corporation, it was the Minister for International Trade.
We asked the minister involved for the information. What we got from the minister is, “No, I am sorry. It is an arm's length agency between us and that crown corporation, therefore we cannot give it to you”. It is a very convenient arrangement that should not be continued.
Let us examine what happens when crown corporations are finally liberated from the heavy reins of government. There have been a few that have finally made it out from the famous spider's web.
Canadian National used to lose about $3 billion a year every year for decades. During the time I have been here in the last seven years, CN finally made it out on its own. It finally became privatized and it has absolutely blossomed. It is in the process of acquiring property in the United States, other railways, to make a continental railway system. It is making lots of money for its shareholders. Why could it not make money when its shareholder was the Government of Canada? I suggest that government does a poor job in business and should get out.
Another crown corporation that made it out was Air Canada. Look what has happened to Air Canada. It has acquired Canadian Pacific as a result. Now it is making lots of money. It is essentially a monopoly in the airline industry in Canada.
Petro-Canada is another one that used to lose money. What happened when it came out from under government? It is making money and competing effectively.
Those corporations had a magical transformation from perpetual money losers and drains on the public treasury to productive members of the private sector. And when they do that, they start paying taxes to the Government of Canada and taxes to the provinces. When they were crown corporations they never had to pay taxes, nothing that draconian of course.
In keeping with tradition, I suspect that the cost of running the Canadian Tourism Commission as a crown corporation if Bill C-5 goes through will be higher in five years than it is now.
When I was first briefed about the bill it was suggested that moving the operation to Toronto was a distinct possibility. That is the kind of empire building I am talking about. I can just see the empire building logic behind that move. Where is it now? It is in Industry Canada at the C.D. Howe building just down the street.
I suggest that the commission will not be there very long. It will not be acceptable for the new Canadian Tourism Commission as a crown corporation. It will require some new, prominent, downtown Toronto location, top dollar real estate of course, to reflect the new status of a crown corporation. It will also probably mean that salaries will have to go up so that the current 62 commission employees can afford to live in Toronto, not to mention the cost of relocating all those folks.
That is just another major problem we have with crown corporations. They are not accountable. Sure they must answer to the responsible minister, but the rest of us, especially the MPs in the opposition, are forced to wait until the end of the fiscal year or when they table their annual reports to get the information, if there is any information we can get at all. Whenever we try to get that information we get the runaround in the House of Commons and from the crown corporations themselves.
MPs have gone through an exercise in futility in dealing with crown corporations. Therefore why would we want to vote in favour of creating another one?
It is clear that Canada needs to promote tourism and market our beautiful country as an ideal vacation destination for ourselves and for those from abroad. It is not clear however that we need another crown corporation to do this for us. That is why we are opposed to Bill C-5 and will not be supporting it.